Wednesday, 23 March 2016

Some Parallels II

"'The shadow of the God lies on us... We will go to Him together, the hunt will give Him honor.'"
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, "The Children's Hour" IN Larry Niven, Ed, Man-Kzin Wars III, pp. 35-166 AT p. 164.

This sounds like a mixture of Merseian ("...the God...") and Ythrian ("The shadow...," "...the hunt will give Him honor...") However, it is a kzin.

Niven's Thrints' Power is Asimov's Mule's Power. The Mule was like the single alien in a humans only galaxy until we learned that he was a rebel Gaian - and that the robots were behind Gaia. Robots are like artificial protectors.

The Mule, Gaia and robots are in Asimov's Galactic Empire future history;
Merseians and Ythrians are in Anderson's Technic History;
kzinti, Thrintun and protectors are in Niven's Known Space History.

I have gained a new perspective of looking sideways across these future histories instead of chronologically along each in turn.

The conclusion of "The Children's Hour" is the turning point between the STL and FTL periods of Known Space. Poul Anderson showed STL interstellar warfare in "Time Lag," which is, perhaps, the culmination of his ninth future history.

1 comment:

The problem with war being waged across space by STL means is precisely because of how SLOW that is. I think it would work only if one planet was decisively weaker than the other. So, while Chertkoi initially seemed to have the edge over Vaynamo, the more dynamic and efficient society, culture, and economy of the latter gave it a decisive, long term advantage over the former. Once the shock of the first attack from Chertkoi had faded and the enemy had left, the Vaynamoans would have TIME to build the much more advanced and efficient military (and the industries that required) needed for defeating the final attack from Chertkoi.